I am 9. The back of the playground is still wild, before astroturf took over. Mulberry trees from the yard next door bend their branches over the swing set. There’s a huge yard behind the park, with a tree chopped in half. Flowers take it over, along with mushrooms, bird nests, and small shoots attempting to regrow the tree. I hold onto my love for nature, and learn later that fungus communicates across forests, spreading its tendrils through the dirt, talking to dying trees to keep them alive. I can’t understand how the specifics of science works, and you need math to study science, so I’ve resigned myself to simply be of nature, to feel its soul in every breeze, every bug that crawls across my tiny arms. And somehow, this tree stump is helping me realize that I’m not a girl. Or boy. Or woman, especially. I want to be this tree. Maybe not literally, but I want to be a million things all at once. I want to be pretty and ugly and a home to all.
I tell my parents I wish I could be a cat. They don’t have to do anything but sleep and eat and cuddle and play. Feral cats even get to live in the wild, and explore. Sometimes people take them in and give them nothing but love, simply for who they are. I don’t tell my parents that part. For some reason, it feels too intimate. Hits the nail on the head. I devour books at the library about all kinds of animals. Being a lizard in a jungle, or a lion on the savana, seems like a perfect opportunity to explore the world, passport free.
I love things boys love, and things girls love. Looking at my body in the mirror, i just see a person. Even if that person has long hair, or a dress, or a vagina. I feel sexless. And its exciting! I feel left out by girls and boys who are weirded out by my variety of gender noncomforming interests (GI Joes, American Girl Dolls, wanting to be an archeologist, my favorite super hero being Swamp Thing), but I don’t want to conform. I hate playing with just girls or boys. Why can’t we play superheroes who are princesses too? Why can’t we switch up the roles in imaginative play over and over?
The gay couples in my neighborhood are fascinating. As an adult, I know now that gender roles and sexism still affect queer couples, but at the time, it felt like a way to just be in love, without worrying whos the husband or wife. Lesbian couples are my favorite. In my kid mind, I think, “you can be a tomboy and a princess when you’re lesbian!”. The lesbian women around me express themselves in so many different ways. I love the girliness with an edge that, what I will later learn, are called femmes. Butch women are tough and strong, but still clearly women. Its the first time I realize you can be a woman and be strong. But I still feel like neither a boy or a girl. Later I realize how hard gender roles can be even for queer people. I become a teenager, and hear my queer friends debate, “can I do that as a femme?” “does mascara make me not a butch?” “why can’t she be more dominant, shes a butch!”. I feel limited all over again. No one’s said nonbinary yet. I haven’t come across it on Tumblr, and no ones yet recommended Stone Butch Blues.